The Amazon Kindle is basically an electronic book. Amazon calls it a “Wireless Reading Device.” The Kindle has been on the market about a year now. I recall looking at it when it was introduced and thinking it was a very cool idea.

Well, now it’s a year later and I own a Kindle. And it’s very cool.

The first thing you notice about a Kindle is the “electronic paper” screen. It’s essentially black-on-white and the detail is very sharp. Text is crisp and very readable even in bright daylight outside. There are a number of screen saver pictures that come with the Kindle and these are very detailed, looking very much like fine etchings.

Operation of the Kindle is straightforward. On the left side are Previous Page and Next Page buttons. On the right, a Next Page button and a small Back button. A small scroll wheel below the bottom right corner of the screen controls the cursor and menu system. Push the wheel to click, roll it to scroll the cursor.

The Kindle has a headphone jack for listening to music or audiobooks, a USB port for transferring content from your PC to the Kindle and vice-versa, and an AC jack to recharge the battery. At the bottom of the screen are indicators for remaining battery charge and wireless connectivity.

Battery life is impressive. I’ve gotten 3-4 days from full charge to half discharged with it on 24/7. I’ve not run the battery all the way down. Amazon warns not to do that, but to keep it topped off. I’m still a Ni-Cad guy so I can’t bring myself to plug it in every night, but when it gets to the halfway mark, I’ll charge it back up.

The Kindle is on the Whispernet wireless network, aka Sprint. I get 4-5 bars of signal strength everywhere I’ve been with it so far. The wireless is fast. A 1.5-2MB Kindle book downloads in a few seconds.

The Kindle has about 180MB of available internal memory, good for a hundred or so books in Kindle format. There is an SD card slot to add more storage. I have a 4GB card in mine which will hold literally thousands of books and documents. The Content Manager allows you to move items from internal memory to the SD card and vice-versa, or delete items altogether.

If you purchase a book from the Kindle Store, it is delivered to your Kindle via the wireless and also stored in your online Media Library at Amazon. This means if you run out of space on your Kindle and have to remove something to make more room, you can redownload it from the Media Library at any time when you have more available space.

In addition to the content you purchase from the Kindle Store, you can convert various files to Kindle format. At the moment, Microsoft Word documents are supported along with MP3s, JPGs and a few others. PDF documents are in the experimental stage. I’ve converted several PDFs and the results have been varied, but this looks very promising. One thing I intend to try soon is to convert a PDF to Word using Adobe Acrobat and then having the Kindle convert the Word doc.

Conversion is simple. Just email the file(s) you wish converted as attachments to the email address given you when you register your Kindle. There are actually two addresses, one of which is free. The difference is that the paid address delivers the converted document directly to the Kindle via the wireless. The free version stores the documents on Amazon’s servers and sends you an email with links to download them to your computer. You then transfer the downloaded files to your Kindle via USB cable.

As of this writing, the paid conversion address has not been charging the 10 cents they say they will charge for the service, but eventually I expect they will. The conversion fee isn’t unreasonable and IMO is easily justified in the time savings avoiding the download/upload cycle.

Not all books are available in Kindle format yet, but they’re certainly working on it. If you find a book on Amazon that isn’t in Kindle format, there’s a link next to it to tell the publisher you’d like them to publish it for the Kindle. I’ve been doing that with computer books as some of my favorite publishers aren’t putting out Kindle editions yet.

Purchasing content from the Kindle store is straightforward. You activate 1-Click ordering on your Amazon account and all your Kindle purchases are processed via 1-Click. There is a Search capability where you can search the Kindle Store from your Kindle by keying in search terms from the keyboard. The Kindle keyboard is a typical QWERTY layout, but the keys are very small buttons. Not all the punctuation marks are present, but when you need one, you press the Sym key which brings up a menu of them.

Thankfully, the period, forward slash and @ symbols are on the keyboard. Web surfing is available albeit in experimental mode and pretty much limited in usefulness to mostly-text web sites.

I leave my Kindle on 24/7 by putting it in sleep mode. If it’s idle with no activity for 10 minutes it will go into sleep mode by itself. There is a two-key combination to put it to sleep or wake it up depending on its current state. I also leave the wireless turned on although this probably consumes a bit more battery power than with it off.

In addition to books, you can purchase newspaper and blog subscriptions for your Kindle. All the major newspapers are available and well over 1,000 blogs as of this writing. I signed up for two sports blogs for 99 cents per month each. Whenever anything new is posted to the blogs, it shows up as a new item on my Kindle home page immediately.

I definitely love my Kindle! It’s allowing me to take reading material with me where it’s too cumbersome to carry a book or two and I can grab 10 or 15 minutes of reading as I get time during the day. If all my computer books were somehow transferable to the Kindle, I’d save a good percentage of the space in my home office! Hey, it’s nice to dream.

John The Geek

You may have heard the term “living on purpose.” We all know from when we were kids that if you did something “on purpose” it means you intended to do it, as opposed to something that happened “by accident” or “I didn’t mean to.”

I’ve been in Internet marketing for almost two years and I’ve recently realized that I haven’t been marketing “on purpose.” That isn’t to say that I became a marketer accidentally. Obviously, I intended to become a marketer! What’s been accidental has been the result I’ve achieved.

Let me explain. When you set out to do something, it doesn’t really matter what it is, you’ll get a result. The question is: is it the result you wanted when you started out?

The statistics are pretty depressing: something well over 90% of all startup businesses fail within the first few years. The length of time it takes for the business to fail is often a function of how long the owner can continue to pour money into it without making a profit!

So, why does such a large percentage fail? Because they have no clear vision of what they want and how the business will help them achieve their goal. In other words, there’s no overarching purpose to the business.

Ask any Internet marketer, or any business owner for that matter, why they’re in business and virtually all of them will say “To make money.” There’s usually a pretty important reason why they want to make money, but no clear plan for how that’s going to happen.

Your life has a purpose and your business needs to fit with that purpose. If you don’t know what your life’s purpose is, obviously, that can’t happen except by accident.

So, how do you discover your life’s purpose? By examining your life and identifying what turns you on and makes your heart sing. You were put here on this Earth to be joyful so by definition anything that brings you joy is part of your purpose.

It doesn’t matter what brings you joy. The important thing is to recognize and acknowledge it. Once you’ve done that, you can focus on finding ways to do those things as often as possible. Ideally, you can do it for a living. Imagine that, having fun “working!”

Look around you and notice that the happiest people you know are the ones doing what they love to do. You may think that you can’t make a living doing what you love to do, but the fact is that you very likely can. Once you know and embrace your purpose, anything is possible!

Knowing your purpose gives you focus, and focus is critical to success. Talk to anyone who is successful at anything and you’ll find that they are totally focused on what they do. That’s why they succeed while others all around them are failing.

If you’re struggling and/or not getting the results you want, I highly recommend taking some time to identify your life’s purpose. I’ve recently completed a 12-week course called “What’s My Purpose?”. It has helped me to discover my life’s true purpose and given me the focus around which to build my life and my business. If you’re ready for the life you want and deserve, you can get all the details here:

http://whatsmypurpose.com/johnsawyer

John The Geek

Most Windows users are familiar with “Patch Tuesday”, the Microsoft monthly release of security updates for Windows and other Microsoft products. In a rare move, Microsoft has released an emergency security patch outside its normal Patch Tuesday cycle.

Security bulletin MS08-067 (patch 958644) addresses a new threat that is obviously pretty severe for Microsoft to release a patch deemed an “emergency” fix. When your Windows machine prompts you to update, assuming you’re like me and don’t let it do them automagically, the recommendation is to apply this patch immediately. This patch affects all versions of Windows.

I’m normally not in any rush to apply security patches as there have been enough cases of them causing more problems than they solve when first released. I usually wait a while until my newletter and industry sources indicate they’re safe. In this case, the word is to apply this patch now, so I made sure all my machines are patched.

John The Geek

If you sign up for my marketing mailing list, the first recommendation I make is to spend just under 8 bucks and grab a copy of Dennis “The Five Buck Guy” Becker’s “5 Bucks A Day, Jr.” report. I call it “the best 8 bucks you’ll ever spend online” because it contains exactly the advice every Internet marketer needs, at least those like me who spend their first year “chasing the shiny things” and never following anything through to completion.

Since purchasing my copy of “5 Bucks A Day, Jr.” I’ve gotten to know Dennis as a straight-shooting guy who is sincerely interested in helping other marketers be successful. A few months ago I joined his membership site entitled “Earn 1K A Day”.

The focus of “Earn 1K A Day” is providing resources to help you reach your first $1,000 day. The forum is outstanding and loaded with successful and future successful marketers all sharing their questions and answers with one goal in mind: to help those willing to make the effort to succeed.

The forum is just one part of “Earn 1K A Day”. Another benefit of membership is the amazing collection of reports, software, courses, and PLR/MRR products included in the $39.95 monthly membership dues. You simply read the reviews of the available products, choose the ones you want and download them. Some are for personal use only, and others can be resold. The obvious benefits are that A) you get expert opinions on what the products do so you know what you’re getting before you download them, and B) you’re not laying out additional money to get them!

I’d be willing to bet a whole lot of money that you’re spending way more than 40 bucks a month on products to try out, most of which you won’t like or use. Then, you have to go through the hassle of asking for a refund, or end up eating the cost.

In addition to the included products, there are many member-exclusive deals offered on recommended products every month. These are typically products offered by other members and are of the highest quality. Because you’re a “Earn 1K A Day” member, you’ll pay a lot less than the general public pays for them plus you’ll have direct access to the author and other users to get your questions answered.

I think by now you can tell that I’m really excited about my membership in “Earn 1K A Day”. I’ve joined a lot of sites and bought a ton of products in my marketing efforts and I’ve dropped most of them. “Earn 1K A Day” is one membership I’ll keep because it’s worth way more than what it costs me every month.

Check out “Earn 1K A Day” for 60 days. If you don’t agree with me that it’s a worthwhile investment, Dennis will happily refund your money. I’m betting he won’t have to.

John The Geek

Imagine that you were a very successful businessman rolling along toward a leisurely retirement with a net worth in the millions. Pretty nice scenario, isn’t it?

Then, one day you wake up to find yourself at age 65 over $4 million in debt! What would you do?

Many would have given up after such a crushing reversal of fortunes. One man who found himself in exactly that situation did something about it. They call him The 20 Million Dollar Man. His name is Douglas Goodey.

How did Douglas Goodey get the nickname The 20 Million Dollar Man? Over the 10 years between ages 65 and 75, he went from $4 million in debt to making over $20 million!

I don’t know what your personal situation is, but here’s why this story speaks to me. I’m not $4 million in debt, thank goodness, but sometimes it feels like that much. I’ll be 60 years of age in a couple of months and right now retirement isn’t an option.

I’m working hard at building up my Internet marketing business to the point where it can eventually replace my full time job income. Knowing that Douglas Goodey came from a much worse situation than mine and turned it around to that degree gives me the confidence that I can do the same for my own situation.

Download Douglas’ free report “15 Secrets That Made Me Millions” by visiting his web site: http://www.20milliondollarman.com.

John The Geek

About a year ago I saw an announcement that Microsoft was soon to launch an operating system called Windows Home Server. I was immediately intrigued because I’d been wanting a way to centralize my file storage so that I could keep all my data in one place and access it from any of my computers without having to have copies of everything on all the machines.

I discovered that WHS provided that and much more. Here’s a short list of its capabilities:

• Central shared file storage
• Automatic backup of all computers attached to it
• Remote access via the Internet
• Media streaming to compatible devices on the network
• Sharing of photos and videos with family and friends right from the server

I decided this was an ideal solution to my problem. My original plan was to purchase the software and convert my old desktop machine into a Home Server. This turned out to be a problem, however, when Windows Home Server was suddenly backordered and not available for quite a long time.

I eventually gave up and purchased an HP MediaSmart Server which comes with Windows Home Server. This was actually a better solution as the MediaSmart Server has four drive bays while my desktop machine only has two.

The HP box came with a 500GB hard drive already installed. Since my desktop machine has a total of 415GB of disk in it, I knew I’d need more disk capacity in the server. I purchased a 1TB internal hard drive to install in it. I already have three external USB 500GB drives which I can add to the server via its USB ports, if I choose to.

I set the server up last weekend and got it running. I installed the Windows Home Server client software on my desktop machine first in order to get the server configured and the software updated. This was very easy to do and went quite smoothly.

Next, I installed the Windows Home Server connector on my laptop. Now I can administer the server from either machine and transfer files to the server and access the files from both machines.

The only glitch I’ve encountered so far is that the desktop machine refuses to backup to the server. The C: drive in the desktop machine apparently has some errors on it and Windows Home Server won’t back up the disk with errors. I’m still working on getting the errors cleared up so the server can back up the desktop automatically. Stay tuned for further developments on that situation.

I still need to enable remote access, get the extra hard drives installed, and get the rest of my data files transferred to the server. Once all that’s done, I will get the desktop and laptop set up to backup automatically to the server every night. I’ll post more on those activities as they happen.

I’ve also found a blog dedicated to Windows Home Server users: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk

So far, I’m happy with my server setup. If you have a lot of data and several computers that all need to access it, you’ll want to seriously consider a solution like this.

John The Geek

Yet another shot has been fired in the ongoing browser wars. You may or may not know that Google has launched its new browser Google Chrome. I downloaded it yesterday and installed it on two different machines, one running Windows XP Professional and another running Windows Vista Home Premium.

The first thing I noticed about it was the significant increase in the speed of GMail in Chrome. According to a blog post I read, which was one of the things that convinced me to give Chrome a try now rather than wait, Google has done some very serious optimization of their Javascript implementation. Since GMail is an AJax application which makes very heavy use of Javascript, this makes sense and explains the difference in speed vs. Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Firefox is my browser of choice for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is the vast array of add-ons available for Firefox, many of which have become integral parts of my daily activities. I don’t know of any add-ons for Chrome yet, but given that it’s open source I expect there will be many very soon.

I’m limiting my use of Chrome to Google applications for now. It’s a bit inconvenient having to have Firefox open at the same time to make use of all its plugins and Roboform (which doesn’t work with Chrome yet, either), but the speed difference in the Google applications is worth it. I fully expect that gap to close quickly as developers port their add-ons to Chrome and create new ones.

One interesting glitch: when I installed Chrome on my XP laptop, Chrome asked me if I wanted to import my bookmarks, history, etc. from Firefox. Since Firefox is my default browser, of course I did so.

When I installed Chrome on my Vista laptop, I was only given the choice to import bookmarks from Internet Explorer. Firefox was nowhere to be seen in the dropdown list. Needless to say, this is an annoyance, but since I’m only using Chrome for Google apps for now anyway, not a show-stopper.

The bottom line: if you like playing with new software or you really want GMail to be faster, download Chrome and check it out. If you want it to replace IE or Firefox, wait a while. Because Chrome is in beta, I expect things to be pretty fluid for a while. I’ll keep you posted on significant news as it happens.

John The Geek

Free...sorta...

Has anyone else noticed that the definition of the word “free” seems to be undergoing some reshaping lately? I got an email today proudly presenting me “free” software. The software sounded interesting, so being the geek that I am I went to check it out.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the software is a “free 15-day trial” of an application. Once the 15 days are up, of course, they’re going to make me a heck of a deal to buy the full version. Wow, how lucky can a geek get?!?

At least this one is a single payment after the 15 days are up. I recently received a “free” marketing book from a big-time marketer who shall remain nameless. The “free” book only cost me $7.95 for shipping and handling. What “free” means in this case is that the marketer only made a couple bucks’ profit on each book.

That wasn’t what I found annoying. That particular ploy has been going on for years. “I’ll send you this valuable CD/book/whatever FREE! You just pay a nominal fee to cover shipping and handling!” Okay, we all know that game and we go along with it because, hey, $7.95 for an actual printed book isn’t such a bad deal and we’ll overlook the “free” thing.

I got the book and saw the “BONUS! Money-making software included free!” alert on the cover. “Cool, free software!” thought I. So, I looked in the back of the book to see what the free software was and where to download it.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the “free software” is actually a 30-day trial of an online service run by said big time marketer that features all kinds of marketing advice and wisdom. That’s apparently the money-making part of the equation. I pay to access all this great content and the marketer makes money.

“So, what happens after the 30 days are up?” I hear you asking.

Good question. If I decide to continue accessing the service, it’s a mere $39.95 per month! And I didn’t think it could get any better than the “free” book!

For the record, I’ve actually used this service during its beta stage and there is software involved. There’s a little application that you download to your machine that puts a streaming bar across the top of your screen. You click on things you see that look interesting and it opens your web browser and takes you to the site where you can access the article or whatever.

Is it worth $39.95 per month? Not to me, but others apparently think so.

My issue is not with the service. However, I find it disingenuous at best to trumpet something as “free” when it’s going to end up costing me 40 bucks a month. Call it what it is: a “free 30-day trial.” Don’t tell me it’s “free software” when it’s clearly not.

Marketers have a bad enough reputation as it is. We don’t need further fuel for that fire. I have no problem with enthusiasm for a product, but let’s not be reinventing the language to suit our own agendas.

John The Geek

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Here’s an interesting question about headers that I’m sure a lot of people have:

I have downloaded many headers to use in my graphic designs for websites. Many of them already have text on them telling me where to put “my slogan” and “my website name”…[how do I] eliminate the instruction text on the headers?

The headers are probably in PDS (Photoshop) format. As such, they are layered. The text in question is contained in one or more layers. You simply need software that understands layers.

There is a freeware package called The GIMP (Graphic Image Manipulation Package) that does anything and everything you’d ever want to do with graphics, including Photoshop graphics. There are
tutorials out there, also free, and it will be a rather steep learning curve, but well worth it if you plan to do much graphics editing.

Another possibility is Serif’s PhotoPlus, which is what I use. You can download a free version at:

http://freeserifsoftware.com

I don’t know if the free version can work with Photoshop layers, but the paid version definitely does. I have the paid versions of most of Serif’s applications and I’ve been very happy with them.

No matter which software you use, the procedure is the same:

• Remove the layer that contains the sample text
• Create a new layer that contains the text you want
• Position the layer over the graphic so the text appears where you want it
• Export the entire image as a .jpg or .png or whatever you want to use
  for your site header.

The details of how to do the above steps will vary according to which software you end up using, but it should be fairly straightforward in any case.

John The Geek

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I recently launched a new online business technical training site after a pre-launch period of about three weeks. During that period I did some promotion of the site and had a form on the landing page to collect names and email addresses of those interested in knowing when the site went live.

A total of 78 people opted in and when the site went live, of course, I emailed those folks to let them know. One of those people turned out to be a fellow marketer living about 40 minutes from me. She emailed me to let me know that a few days prior to the site launch.

Launch day came and I got another email from her saying how she was sorry, but she “couldn’t afford [my] prices” and she wouldn’t be signing up for the site. She then went into a long dissertation about how she had to be very careful how she spent her money and how there are lots of scam artists out there and that she had the perfect plan for making her fortune on the Internet.

You ready? Here’s the plan:

1. Put up a squeeze page and collect a bunch of names and emails
2. Get those people to trust her
3. Join an affiliate program and sell the product to her list

Here I’d been working my tail off for almost two years to get this Internet marketing thing figured out and she had it down to three simple steps! Who knew?!?

Obviously, she left out a few details in the master plan, like how she was going to get people to visit her squeeze page and leave their contact info so that she could then convince them she was trustworthy. I wrote back to her and told her that if she already knew how to put up a squeeze page and drive traffic to it she didn’t need my training anyway. I wondered what had prompted her to sign up for my prenotification list in the first place, but decided not to ask.

I had previously asked her what she felt was a reasonable price for online business technical training, but never got an answer. I felt (and still do) the charter membership rate was very reasonable, maybe even too reasonable, but it’s all in the eye of the beholder. I restrained myself from asking her how she expected to build an online business with a mindset that was afraid to spend a few dollars a month for training, but since she apparently doesn’t need training, the point is moot anyway.

The point of this is that I can recall when I first started out and the idea of committing to spending more than a few bucks a month was a little scary. The reason it was scary was that I didn’t know if I was going to generate enough revenue to cover it.

That can be a big hurdle for people to get over. It often entails being willing to go ahead and commit to the monthly expense and trusting that the investment will help the business generate the necessary revenue. It also requires some patience as the cash flow may not increase dramatically, but slowly over time.

The key is to make the commitment and put in the required effort. If it doesn’t pay off, you’ll have learned something and you can go on to the next thing. Chances are, however, if you give it sufficient time to work, the results will be well worth the investment.

John The Geek